This section describes approaches that could be employed, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or employed. Hence, unless explicitly specified otherwise, any approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application, and any approaches described in this section are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Online Auction systems (i.e., network-based auction systems) have advanced from online merchants providing online auctions of goods (e.g., the online auction system “eBay” at the website address “www.ebay.com”) to the online auctioning of network-based services, for example cloud computing services. Cloud-based application services (e.g., web server services, database services, etc.) are based on providing a user access to an instance of a virtualized application that is executed within a data center. Examples of such online auction systems include generalized second-price auction mechanisms. Google AdWords is an example of an online auction system utilizing generalized second-price auction mechanisms.
Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) is an example auction model in which bidders are not aware of each other's bids and the winner only pays the second highest bid